


all this goodly speech

by Waywarder



Series: Ineffable Shakespeare, or: The Other Arrangement [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), References to Shakespeare, Sad Ending, Shakespeare Quotations, The Taming of the Shrew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:01:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23760502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waywarder/pseuds/Waywarder
Summary: Aziraphale looked at him for a long time then. Crowley never took his hand away from the angel’s face, and they… they tested those waters. Sitting and kneeling in total silence, just watching one another, noting the sudden differences in the hitches to their breathing patterns, observing the slight tremors of fingers and legs and lips.Eyes never leaving Crowley’s, Aziraphale dared to slide his tongue over his own upper lip, and Crowley sucked in a harsh breath.“Well have you heard,” Aziraphale finally broke the silence, and his voice was lower than Crowley could ever recall having heard it before. “But something hard of hearing: They call me Katherine that do talk of me.”In which Crowley interrupts Aziraphale while re-reading one of Will's more controversial titles.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Ineffable Shakespeare, or: The Other Arrangement [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1711726
Comments: 8
Kudos: 39





	all this goodly speech

Crowley walked into the book shop as he often did in the years just before the world didn’t end, entirely unannounced and thoroughly interrupting Aziraphale in the middle of some reading. 

“Angel! C’mon! Let’s go do something!”

Aziraphale was sitting in his trusty armchair, a massive book open on his lap. Crowley recognized it right away.

_The Complete Works of William Shakespeare._

Crowley groaned. “Aren’t you tired of those yet? You’ve seen them all dozens of times!”

“And I’ll see each dozens more, I warrant you,” Aziraphale responded, barely looking up from the page.

“Which one is it this time?”

“If you must now, I’m re-reading _The Taming of the Shrew._ ”

_The Taming of the Shrew._

Crowley could work with that. 

Crowley removed his glasses, and set them down on a nearby pile of books, the small gesture granting him enough time to collect himself and, well…

Get into character. 

“ _Good morrow, Kate,_ ” Crowley began, puffing himself up to his full height, and striding as confidently as he could over to where Aziraphale sat. “ _For that’s your name I hear._ ”

Aziraphale blushed, needlessly. They’d played this game before, Shakespeare in exchange for something close to intimacy. It was the other Arrangement, after all. So long as the words were someone else’s… all bets were off. 

“No, Crowley,” Aziraphale shifted his eyes back to the tome in his lap, face still rather pink. “This one is different.”

“Why?” Crowley asked, a little frustrated. Aziraphale liked this game, Crowley knew he did. 

“I really don’t think that’s any of your business,” Aziraphale said, primly, face practically burning now. Confused, Crowley took a step backward to better take in the sight of the angel. Blushing furiously and clutching at the edges of his volume of the Complete Works, pointedly avoiding Crowley’s gaze. 

“Angel, does this play… This one gets you all worked up, doesn’t it?” Crowley said slowly as he put it together, feeling rather stupid.

Aziraphale dipped his head in the tiniest nod, shrinking a little back into his chair. 

“Why?” Crowley wondered out loud. “He’s so awful to her.”

“I know!” Aziraphale cried out, clapping the book shut, and bringing his hands up to his head, clearly ashamed. “But I think… oh, I don’t know, Crowley, I think it could be something else in the right actors’ hands. I certainly can’t pretend to know what Will intended, but, when I read this scene, I see two scared people…”

The angel swallowed, summoning up some bravery to continue.

“Playing a game, sort of. They’re just both very bad at it.”

Crowley had never considered the scene like that before, but he knew that he hated to see Aziraphale looking so ashamed.

“And I suppose I do find it a little romantic, you see,” Aziraphale’s confession continued to pour out of him. “All that banter back and forth. They’re each other’s match, do you know what I mean? Maybe they’re both terrible, and, so… well, who else in the world could understand them but the other?”

Crowley… didn’t know what to say to that. Because he did understand. 

He understood all too well. 

Aziraphale looked up at Crowley with pleading eyes. It seemed that he couldn’t stop talking now that he'd started:

“I hope you don’t find me too ridiculous, my dear.”

Crowley stepped up to Aziraphale’s armchair again, and this time went down on his knees before the angel. He brought a hand up to Aziraphale’s flushed face, and Aziraphale sighed at the contact. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, softly. “Of course I find you ridiculous. But the things or the Shakespeare plays or the, I don’t know, whatevers… the whatevers that you find, er, romantic. That’s not ridiculous. That’s just what you like, and that’s all alright. So, don’t be embarrassed on my account.”

Aziraphale smiled at him. “I didn’t know you were so well-versed in sex positivity, my dear.”

“I’m a demon, not an arsehole.”

Aziraphale looked at him for a long time then. Crowley never took his hand away from the angel’s face, and they… they tested those waters. Sitting and kneeling in total silence, just watching one another, noting the sudden differences in the hitches to their breathing patterns, observing the slight tremors of fingers and legs and lips.

Eyes never leaving Crowley’s, Aziraphale dared to slide his tongue over his own upper lip, and Crowley sucked in a harsh breath. 

“ _Well have you heard,_ ” Aziraphale finally broke the silence, and his voice was lower than Crowley could ever recall having heard it before. “ _But something hard of hearing: They call me Katherine that do talk of me._ ”

Crowley grinned, and shifted his hand on Aziraphale’s face so that the backs of his fingertips idly stroked along the angel’s soft skin. “ _You lie, in faith, for you are call’d plain Kate, and bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst…_ ”

It was really a credit to Crowley as an amateur actor that he was able to remember any of the text at all as he continued to trace his fingers over Aziraphale’s face, down on his knees before the angel he so adored. 

“ _Myself am mov’d to woo thee for my wife._ ”

Aziraphale stood up abruptly, nearly knocking Crowley on to his back in the process. They were chest to chest now. “ _Moved! In good time!_ ” And he began to move forward, backing Crowley up with his body and with the force behind his words. “ _Let him that mov’d you hither remove you hence._ “ Aziraphale paused, and looked Crowley up and down, sending a thrill through the demon, until-

Aziraphale laughed, almost dismissively.

“ _I knew you at the first. You were a moveable._ ”

He turned to walk away. Crowley scrambled and ran to catch up, doing a ridiculous sort of twirl to regain his position in front of the angel.

“ _Why, what’s a moveable?_ ” Crowley demanded to know.

“ _A join’d-stool._ ” And, oh, Aziraphale poured all of his most practiced primness and self satisfaction into the reading. Crowley nearly broke character and grinned as himself. This was how the game was supposed to go, after all. A safe indulgence.

_(Anything you want, angel.)_

“ _Thou hast hit it,_ ” Crowley exclaimed, as rogueishly as he possibly could. And, before he could second guess himself, he plopped himself down into Aziraphale’s chair, looping an arm around the angel’s waist and dragging him down into his lap as he did so. Aziraphale gasped. 

“ _Come sit on me._ ”

Crowley softly cupped Aziraphale’s chin, and met the angel’s eyes, this time actually breaking character for a moment.

“Is this okay?” Crowley asked, suddenly a little dizzy to be checking in with Aziraphale as himself. This wasn’t usually a part of this Arrangement, but it felt terribly important. Crowley was hard already, and he was certain that Aziraphale could feel it from where he was sitting on his lap, and this was decidedly new territory for them, Shakespearean or otherwise. “Is this what you want?”

Aziraphale nodded, his chest heaving a little bit. Crowley wanted to tear him apart, but:

“‘S not enough, angel,” Crowley murmured. “You have to say something. As you.”

Aziraphale clenched his eyes shut, breathing more heavily than ever. Crowley could practically hear his heartbeat from their close proximity. He was red in the face again. Crowley’s heart broke a little, that the idea of being with him could ever cause Aziraphale so much stress. He brought his hands to Aziraphale’s hips to gently lift him up, to apologize, to leave and try to forget that this has ever happened.

Aziraphale grabbed Crowley’s wrists, and guided them firmly around his own waist. 

“I want this,” he whispered, so softly, barely there.

“Why?” Crowley needed to know, needed to hear it, he was desperate for it.

“Crowley, I want _you,_ ” Aziraphale looked a little desperate himself. Eyes wild in a way that Crowley had never seen before.

Relief and terror crashed simultaneously over Crowley. It can be overwhelming to hear what you’ve always wanted to hear.

“But I don’t know where this can go,” Aziraphale confessed, sounding miserable.

Crowley closed his own eyes now, committing to memory the feel of Aziraphale’s soft flesh under his fingers beneath the waistcoat, beneath the shirt. 

“I don’t care,” Crowley lied. 

Tears were now swimming in Aziraphale’s eyes, and damn, this was not what Crowley had in mind when he’d burst into the shop today.

_Fucking Shakespeare._

“What if it’s not enough?” Aziraphale whispered.

“Whatever you are to me, angel, that’s enough,” Crowley promised, though it wrecked him to admit it. Because it was true. However much else he wanted…

He would never take Aziraphale’s friend from him. It didn’t matter how much it hurt him.

“Won’t this make it hurt worse?” Aziraphale seemed to be reading his mind.

“It might,” Crowley answered, honestly. Because it would. He knew that. To be with Aziraphale only the once, to be haunted by the memories of him for the rest of eternity, to go to this place together and then go back to being “friends” as though it hadn’t meant anything to Aziraphale. To never speak of it again when he knew that he would ever be able to think about anything else. 

Crowley cared so much. 

“Thought this play was supposed to be funny,” Crowley cracked, voice coming out more flatly than he’d intended. 

“You see?” Aziraphale smiled, ruefully. “I ruined it. By being me. You should have just let me be your bonny Kate.”

“You’re my everything,” Crowley hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but it was the truth.

“ _Asses are made to bear,_ ” Aziraphale tried again, but he began to cry in earnest before he could finish the line. Crowley moved his arms up from the angel’s waist to wrap them around his back, pulling him against his own body. Just to hold him. 

Aziraphale wept, and Crowley held him, willing himself for the millionth time in his long life to let it all go, to move on, to dig a grave for his love for this incredible, once-in-a-lifetime creature and to bury it somewhere deep where it couldn’t ever hurt either of them ever again.

“I’m sorry,” Crowley murmured against Aziraphale’s soft hair. “Angel, I’m so fucking sorry.”

_(We’re never playing this game again.)_

“I’m sorry, too, Crowley,” Aziraphale sobbed. “Oh, my dear, you have no idea.”

“I might.”

Crowley held Aziraphale until the world grew dark outside. He held the angel he loved in his arms, and he did his best to become numb to it. To not catalogue the glory of every texture and sensation of Aziraphale so close to him, there in his lap.

They were friends, and that had to be enough.

Finally, once again, Aziraphale broke the silence.

“Would you care for some tea, my dear?”

_(We shouldn’t be drunk around each other right now.)_

_And scene._

Crowley shook his head. “Nah, I’m good. Thanks, though. I should probably head home.”

Aziraphale nodded, a little too brightly. “Always a pleasure to see you, my friend.”

_My friend._

The words were an honor, really. They were the best thing about Crowley’s life.

He had to get the fuck out of there.

“Take care of yourself, angel.”

His hand was on the door handle when he heard a soft, perfect voice behind him:

“ _For, by this light, whereby I see thy beauty,_ ” Aziraphale recited, and Crowley let the words wash over him, fighting to break through the dam he had so recently constructed around his heart. “ _Thy beauty-_ ” The word was so magnificent in Aziraphale’s voice- “ _that doth make me like thee well._ ”

“No, Aziraphale,” Crowley couldn’t bear to turn back around. “This one’s different.”

And he left the shop without another word, Shakespearean or otherwise.

**Author's Note:**

> Ah! This was supposed to be an exercise in writing a sex scene, and I went and made it sad. Sorry!
> 
> Thank you for reading! I've officially collected these into a series, and I'm looking forward to continuing to explore these two idiots using Shakespeare as an excuse to make out over the course of history.


End file.
